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Honestly this is a good thing. Right now the H1B is a bullshit immigration program for cheap engineers from India and China designed to depress wages in silicon
by luckydata 8y ago
Honestly this is a good thing. Right now the H1B is a bullshit immigration program for cheap engineers from India and China designed to depress wages in silicon valley. A change is sorely needed, this is not big enough but it's definitely a step.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mc32 8y agoThey should also work on a visa system for seasonal (low-skill) workers and enforce e-verify so that people don't skirt the system willy-nilly. We need foreign low skilled workers and they want to work, but we need to regulate that workforce so they don't undercut our native low-skills workforce by being unregulated and overwhelming the workforce with cheap unregulated labor.
- SteveNuts 8y agoHow do you keep them from overstaying though?
- FakeComments 8y agoE-verify flags them as not having valid work authorization when their visa expires. If they reliably can’t find work when here illegally, then there’s less incentive to be here illegally.
- ALittleLight 8y agoe-verify. If they don't have a job and regular income it won't make sense for them to stay.
- mc32 8y agoPunish employers with heavy fines for e-verify violations. If no one hires you, no reason to stick around. This is what Japan does, Korea, Taiwan, etc. The US is way lenient on illegal entry and accommodating to irregular workers. In many countries the only way you get around that is if you work with the local mobsters --so only highly risk taking indivs take that opportunity.
- markdown 8y agoWhat is e-verify?
- grzm 8y agohttps://www.e-verify.gov https://www.e-verify.gov > "ABOUT E-VERIFY" > "E-Verify is a web-based system that allows enrolled employers to confirm the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States. E-Verify employers verify the identity and employment eligibility of newly hired employees by electronically matching information provided by employees on the Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, against records available to the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)."
- markdown 8y agoThanks.
- mc32 8y agoE-Verify dot gov. [https://www.e-verify.gov https://www.e-verify.gov]
- wyldfire 8y agoIIRC employers avoid this liability by executing the fraud themselves. There's no e-verify violation because they use legitimate SSNs from a living person, fraudulently. The workers aren't the problem, the employers are. Legislators and govt executives look the other way in order to preserve competitive agriculture.
- mc32 8y agoSome restauranteurs and other cash businesses try and pull fast ones on the IRS. So the IRS conducts audits and has agents case suspect establishments. No reason DHS/ICE, whatever cannot do the same and jail fraudsters. If they, the Feds, can jail Martha Stewart on unrelated technicalities, they can jail these fraudsters. Start at the top, target big ones and work your way down to the small ones (they'll get the news and come correct).
- rangibaby 8y ago> We need foreign low skilled workers and they want to work, but we need to regulate that workforce so they don't undercut our native low-skills workforce by being unregulated and overwhelming the workforce with cheap unregulated labor. That ship sailed some time ago to China or anywhere there is a sweatshop.
- mc32 8y agoFarm work, restaurant work, construction work, warehouse work cannot be "shipped off to China", yet we have our own population which has been undercut by unregulated cheap labor. We do need a number of foreign workers, but we need to regulate it so as to not flood our labor market and undercut our workers and have it where two grown adults working full time jobs can't afford to live a lower middle class lifestyle (as was possible couple of decades ago).
- skybrian 8y agoFarm work could be shipped off by importing food instead of growing it in the U.S. (Farmers going out of business if the cost of labor goes up too much.)
- mc32 8y agoWe have seasons and we also have scale. Might lose some green leafy things, but not the real stuff like wheat, sorghum, corn, soy, rice, etc. Some of these leafy green things are gonna get automated anyway.
- skybrian 8y agoSo, you don't care about California farmers or dairy farmers then.
- mc32 8y agoDairy is pretty automated, farming is getting more and more automated. But, we will be helping many low skills Americans who now get undersold in the labor market. Other advanced economies manage the cost of labor in agribiz, we can too.
- donavanm 8y agoIsnt that literally the H2B visa?
- justinhj 8y agoI think you’re putting the cart before the horse. Why is there a shortage of low skilled workers in a country of 400m? Because you have illegal workers who’ve driven the price of that work below what the market legally supports. If the law was effectively enforced those low skilled jobs would pay enough for Americans
- mc32 8y agoWe are in agreement. We need some low skills workers, we don’t need all the unregulated low skills workers we have. Instead of 10-15mill, whatever the estimate is, we could probably use 4mill regulated foreign low skills workers to balance economic labor needs with giving and affording our own low skills workers an opportunity to make a living wage. We know it’s possible. We had it in the 70s, 80s, before our low skills workers were undercut in price.
- skybrian 8y agoVegetable and dairy farmers would go out of business, if prices can't be raised due to competition from imports. You'd need tariffs as well, and people would need to put up with significant price increases at the grocery store. There are not many Americans who want their kids to grow up to be farmhands or migrant workers. If you can speak English, you're better off in retail. For immigrants, there is a valuable benefit that makes it all worth it: being able to live in the US. Without that incentive, it's going to be really tough.
- mc32 8y agoLots of countries contend with this: Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Britain, etc. People adapt. Perhaps we grow to appreciate our food and throw out less waste.
- Qworg 8y agoEven at wages closing in on 3x minimum wage, we cannot get enough farm labor[1] - obviously low skilled American labor still doesn't want the job. What's the solution? [1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/ https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/
- ojbyrne 8y agoSomething like the H-2B visa? https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/h-2b-temporary-non-agricultural-workers https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-worker...
- masonic 8y agoThey should also work on a visa system for seasonal (low-skill) workers That's what H-2[AB] visas are for.
- Spooky23 8y agoNo way. Fewer H1 visas means that instead of having foreign workers here on visas performing work, the functions will move elsewhere. If the government was setting up a program to fund boot camps for ERP and other big boring tech like what is done in India and elsewhere, that would be different. But we’re not doing that.
- pertymcpert 8y agoAnd time and time again it's been shown that outsourcing doesn't really work that well. If it was just about the money, they wouldn't bother sponsoring H1Bs at all. They would just outsource from the start, and why wouldn't they? Unless the skills aren't there to lead a team from abroad with an 8hr time zone difference.
- OurBoysGirls1st 8y agoIf the function could move overseas, it would have. Why assume companies are acting irrationally and paying higher US wages when they can hire inexpensively overseas? Companies hire locally because many jobs cant be moved overseas cost effectively.
- reedhen32 8y agoWhat a weird world we live in though, where PhDs and Masters with a steady job still have to wait 7-10+ years for citizenship, while people can just flip over the fence in the southern border and get citizenship via asylum or birthing kids
- pertymcpert 8y agoYou can't get citizenship by giving birth in the US. And asylum is a special case, it's not really a normal immigration route.
- mc32 8y agoNot the person giving birth but the progeny. Most countries ~164 out of 194) are jus sanguinis (you inherit nationality of parent(s)) we are one of the exceptions with jus soli. We even have “birth tourism” taking advantage of our liberal policy.
- Daishiman 8y agoFalse; pretty much all of the Americas are jus soli.
- mc32 8y agoNot false. How is ~164 out of 194 countries jus sanguinis not most? There are approx 30 of 194 that are jus soli. How is that “false”. And except for Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chili and Uruguay, the rest aren’t what one would think of as “sought after”, otherwise you’d have other people trying to take advantage of their citizenship policies.
- Daishiman 8y agoAn entire continent, of the youngest countries consisting of liberal democracies being jus soli isn't something you can just wave away and pretend is irrelevant or has some particularly unusual behavior. Said countries have even laxes immigration policies, similar proportions of immigrant populations, the same anti-immigrant rhetoric that you're spouting, and yet it's just not really the problem that it's made out to be at all.
- raz32dust 8y agoEven if we assume your assessment of the problem ("H1B is a bullshit immigration program for cheap engineers from India and China designed to depress wages in silicon valley.") is correct, how is this step taking us towards a solution?
- luckydata 8y agoAt least the people being given preference for immigration are more likely to be truly exceptional instead of the cadre of shitty engineers coming in this country with mostly counterfeit resumes. I would call that progress, not necessarily a solution yet. Disclaimer: don't @ me, I'm an immigrant too, but since I live here I would like to be able to work when I'm 50 and not being replaced by someone desperate brought in this country in state of semi-servitude.
- austincheney 8y agoSince your opinion lacks qualification or data I will offer this counter-point: Perhaps the need for immigration is great, because hiring companies lack trust in the competence of the available pool of domestic candidates.
- femiagbabiaka 8y agoThe idea that those on H1B visas are bringing wages down for software engineers is a popular one. Is it supported by data? If it isn’t, this is just thinly veiled xenophobia. Personally, I think the more diverse groups have an opportunity to come to America legally, the better.
- youeseh 8y agoYes. There's value in being able to change jobs as you see please. That value is about 1.3 to 1.5x of not having the freedom to do so.
- femiagbabiaka 8y agoWorkers under H1B transfer jobs less often, but its not impossible or even uncommon, except under the Trump administration.
- acdha 8y agoLook at it from the other direction: large companies have fought giving H1-B workers better protections. They wouldn’t be doing that if they weren’t profiting from workers with less negotiating ability. That’s also my position: don’t ban them, give them flexibility to switch jobs like everyone else so companies can’t hold the threat of deportation over them if they want a better deal.
- femiagbabiaka 8y agoAgreed — more freedom, not less, is the ideal solution here.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- austincheney 8y agoYou replied to a comment arguing against positions made from speculation without data by supplying more speculation without data.
- miles 8y agoIndeed: Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...
- sergiotapia 8y ago"Thousands of Americans Lost Their Job and Here's Why That's a Good Thing" - Article on Cox Media.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- darkestloud 8y agoUmm.. I'm on H1b and I make a lot.
- luckydata 8y agoIt's cold outside, global warming must be a hoax.
- austincheney 8y agoOr maybe the idea of wage depression due to visa status is speculative and unqualified. Is there any data on this?
- luckydata 8y agoTons, I linked a bunch of articles already, you could also Google it and find it if you were actually interested in learning something instead of making the point most ideologically aligned to your own preconceptions.
- austincheney 8y agoI am going to assume your comment lacks objectivity since I stated no opinion or expressed no ideology. I did find research from recent data, that links to additional supporting research, which completely dispels the false assumption that visa workers are paid peanuts: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/h1b-workers/ https://www.glassdoor.com/research/h1b-workers/ > Another reason we shouldn’t be surprised that H1B workers are paid about the same as U.S. workers is because the law requires it.
- brookhaven_dude 8y agoYou can look up H1B salaries online. Salaries seem pretty high to me. Now you may argue it may be even higher if they were forced to hire domestic workers only, but that's just conjecture. Like saying if Android wasn't available then cheap android users would switch to Apple devices.
- bg4 8y agoIt's modern day indentured servitude.
- rswail 8y agoIt's more like a bonded job, rather than "servitude". For the visa holder, they get to work in the US, theoretically at US local wages (or more), in return the sponsoring company gets an employee that is tied to that job. If the US Dept Of Labor and/or the local state department are incorrectly measuring a) the local wage for the position and/or b) whether or not the company has made a good faith effort to find a local employee and failed (both conditions of an H1B position), then that is a failure of regulation, not of the concept of the visa itself.
- baby 8y agoI've posted that before, I'll repost that here From Michio Kaku[1]: "The United States has the worst education system known to science. Our graduates compete regularly at the level of third world countries. How come the scientific establishment of the US doesn't collapse. If we are producing a generation of dummy. If the stupid index of America keeps rising every year [...] how come the scientific establishment of the US doesn't collapse. Let me tell you something. America has a secret weapon. That secret weapon is the H1B. Without the H1B the scientific establishment of this country would collapse. Forget about Google, forget about Silicon Valley, there would not be a Silicon Valley without the H1B. [...] You realize that in the US 50% of all PhD candidates are foreign born. [...]" the rest of the video is pretty good too. I recommend watching it. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fphPeRvhjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fphPeRvhjQ
- ltbarcly3 8y ago>> The United States has the worst education system known to science. Our graduates compete regularly at the level of third world countries This has been debunked so many times. Even if you take the data at face value, this statement cannot be backed up. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/us-students-are-lagging-behind-academically-heres-why https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/us-students-are-laggi... Yes, we are behind a lot of countries. A lot of (VERY) small and (VERY) wealthy European countries for the most part, but also a handful of small Asian countries. But wait, we are ahead of Sweden in science? Is Sweden in the middle of some kind of crisis in their inability to educate their children? What about Norway and Denmark? What about Belgium and Austria and France? They all score about the same as the US in science, are they producing a "generation of dummy"? What about this: https://jakubmarian.com/map-of-the-results-of-pisa-student-assessment-studies-in-mathematics-reading-and-science-in-europe/ https://jakubmarian.com/map-of-the-results-of-pisa-student-a... If you don't just include the rich countries, Europe is doing terribly compared to the US. Of course when the US average is calculated, they don't just take the scores from the rich states separately.
- alvar0 8y agoMoreover, it's the top few % that make a difference between countries. That's what we should be looking at, not the averaged mediocrity.
- simplecomplex 8y agoThis is discrimination, and nothing to celebrate. People without degrees deserve equal treatment. People who want to work lower-paid jobs deserve equal treatment.
- arcticbull 8y agoDisagree, a country has the right to determine what kind of immigrants it prefers. People with in demand skills should have preference over those without. Nobody has a right (except in certain rare circumstances such as asylum) to immigrate to another country. H1s specifically are employment visas. The country shouldn’t take in for employment a bunch of people it doesn’t need should it?
- simplecomplex 8y ago> country has the right to determine what kind of immigrants it prefers Yeah, obviously. You prefer we discriminate based on college education. Why? Don’t people without masters degrees deserve equal treatment? Equal opportunity? > The country shouldn’t take in for employment a bunch of people it doesn’t need should it? The country isn’t a person. If a company wants to hire someone, then obviously they do “need” them.
- arcticbull 8y agoCollege education is a proxy for knowledge and skills of value, however the green card system (not sure if it applies to H1s) provides an equivalence when assigning preferences. EB3 is a bachelors degree or 5 years work experience, and an EB2 preference is a masters or a bachelors + 5 years or 10 years work experience. I don’t necessarily believe caps are valuable on immigration but given that we’re working within a framework where they’re a thing, shouldn’t we prioritize on skill instead of using a lottery - assuming there’s more interest and companies willing to hire than slots?
- simplecomplex 8y ago> shouldn’t we prioritize on skill instead of using a lottery Why? It's not a prioritization based on employer needs or what employers want. Obviously if one has a degree they enjoy being a protected class, and if they don't have a degree they don't like being discriminated against. At least a lottery gave equal opportunity. I also want to point out that this policy is not what companies want. They want the removal of sponsorship requirements and quotas. They generally want to be free to hire who they want.
- austincheney 8y agoThat could be true for silicon valley. I don't know because I don't live there and refuse to move there due to the absurd cost of living and strange subculture. It is not true, though, in most of the rest of the US. Visa holders make close to competitive wages at higher expenses to employers due to the costs of visa sponsorship. I personally know a senior principle engineer at one of the large .coms who has been living and working in the US for almost 15 years and has not bothered to achieve citizenship, because he is doing very well even working under a visa.
- blocked_again 8y agoAren't software engineers in Silicon Valley already paid way too much money? To be honest you can hire 3 or 4 equally good engineers with that kind of money in any other part of the world.
- neuronic 8y agoHow else are you going to inflate housing prices on a large scale?
- t1o5 8y agoAre you sure ? Increasing the masters quota for H1B will worsen things. Here is why. A majority of Masters degree holders in the US are those students who couldn't crack the basic campus recruitment in India for software companies during their Bachelors. So they take a stab at it once more by investing in a masters degree in US which increases their H1B lottery chances. I am not generalizing all the masters degree holders but a major chunk of them.
- tonmoy 8y agoDo you have any data to back this claim up?
- t1o5 8y agoSee the LCA filings data from DOL. Source: https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm Goto Disclosure Tab & Download the H-1B_FY2018.xlsx excel. Filter NJ state and Employer City as Edison. If there was no market for Masters H1B with fake experiences on their resumes, these thriving bodyshops wont exist.
- calvinbhai 8y agoas an immigrant who got an MS degree in US and worked on H1b visa, what you say is quite a simplification of what it takes to move to a different country, get a master's degree and survive long enough to get a H1b visa. A tiny chunk of them may do this, by going to so shady US universities. But that's a very small %age
- ra7 8y ago> A majority of Masters degree holders in the US are those students who couldn't crack the basic campus recruitment in India for software companies during their Bachelors. The majority? How did you get that data? Sounds like proper BS to me. Campus recruitment in India is a joke. There's nothing to "crack" there. How do you explain the same majority completing their graduate studies in the US (much harder than in India) and getting jobs in the US (also much harder than in India)?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- guyzero 8y agoBut it's pretty much the only way to get a work visa in the US. What are the alternatives? L-1? Not much good for US companies that want to hire at the US HQ locations. O-1? Even the average master's degree holder doesn't qualify for this. Also, not eligible for a green card. TN? Only really applicable to Canadians, not eligible for a green card. Waiting for a green card outside the country? De facto discriminatory against Chinese & Indian applicants, the two biggest pools of high tech workers because the green card queue times are insanely long. Americans don't seem to realize that it's really, really hard to get into the country legally to work and the H1-B is one of the few avenues to get a green card for a skilled worker.